The ruins of Selinus are thus described by Mr. Swinburne:—“They lie in several stupendous heaps, with many columns still erect, and at a distance resemble a large town with a crowd of steeples. On the top of the hill is a very extensive level, seven miles off, on which lie the scattered members of three Doric temples, thirty yards asunder, in a direct line from north to south. The most northerly temple, which was pseudodipterous, exceeded the others very much in dimensions and majesty, and now composes one of the most gigantic and sublime ruins imaginable. They all lie in great confusion and disorder.
“The second temple is easily described. It had six columns in the front, and eleven on each side; in all thirty-four. Their diameter is five feet; they were all fluted; and most of them now remain standing as high as the second course of stones. The pillars of the third temple were also fluted, and have fallen down so very entire, that the five pieces which composed them lie almost close to each other, in the order they were placed in when upright. These temples are all of the Doric order, without a base.
“The two lesser ones are more delicate in their parts and ornaments than the principal ruins; the stone of which they are composed is smooth and yellowish, and brought from the quarries of Castel-Franco. There are other ruins and broken columns dispersed over the site of the city, but none equal to these.” Such is the account given by Mr. Swinburne; what follows first appeared in the Penny Magazine.
On the southern coast of Sicily, about ten miles to the east of Cape Granitola, and between the little rivers of Maduini and Bilici, (the Crimisus and Hypsa of ancient times,) a tremendous mass of ruins presents itself in the midst of a solitary and desolate country. These are the sad remains of the once splendid city of Selinus, or Selinuntum, which was founded by a Greek colony from Megara, more than two thousand four hundred years ago. When seen at a distance from the sea, they still look like a mighty city; but on a near approach nothing is seen but a confused heap of fallen edifices—a mixture of broken shafts, capitals, entablatures, and metopæ, with a few truncated columns erect among them. They seem to consist chiefly of the remains of three temples of the Doric order. One of these temples was naturally devoted by a maritime and trading people to Neptune; a second was dedicated to Castor and Pollux, the friends of navigation and the scourge of pirates; the destination of the third temple is uncertain.
The size of the columns and the masses of stone that lie heaped about them is prodigious. The lower circumference of the columns is thirty-one feet and a half; many of the stone blocks measure twenty-five feet in length, eight in height, and six in thickness. Twelve of the columns have fallen with singular regularity, the disjointed shaft-pieces of each lying in a straight line with the base from which they fell, and having their several capitals at the other end of the line. If architects and antiquaries have not been mistaken in their task of measuring among heaps of ruins that in good part cover and conceal the exterior lines, the largest of the three temples was three hundred and thirty-four feet long, and one hundred and fifty-four feet wide.
These are prodigious and unusual dimensions for ancient edifices of this kind. That wonder of the whole world, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, itself did not much exceed these admeasurements. The great Selinuntian temple seems to have had porticoes of four columns in depth, and eight in width, with a double row of sixteen columns on the lateral sides of the cella. It is somewhat singular, from having had all the columns of the first row on the east front fluted, while all the rest of the columns were quite plain. One of these fluted columns is erect and tolerably entire, with the exception of its capital. The fluting, moreover, is not in the Doric style; for each flute is separated by a fillet. The material of which this and the other edifices were formed, is a species of fine-grained petrifaction, hard, and very sonorous on being struck with a hammer. It was hewn out of quarries near at hand, at a place called Campo Bello, where many masses, only partially separated from the rock, and looking as if the excavation had been suddenly interrupted, are still seen.
A flight of ancient steps, in tolerable preservation, leads from the Marinella to the Acropolis, where the covert-ways, gates, and walls, built of large squared stones, may still be traced all round the hill. A little to the west of the Acropolis is the small pestiferous lake, Yhalici, partly choked up with sand. In ancient times this was called Stagnum Gonusa, and it is said the great philosopher Empedocles purified it and made the air around it wholesome, by clearing a mouth towards the sea, and conveying a good stream of water through it. The Fountain of Diana, at a short distance, which supplied this stream, still pours forth a copious volume of excellent water; but it is allowed to run and stagnate over the plain, and now adds to the malaria created by the stagnant lake. The surrounding country is wholly uncultivated, and, where not a morass, is covered with underwood, dwarf palms, and myrtle-bushes of a prodigious growth.
For six months in the year, Selinunte is a most unhealthy place; and though the stranger may visit it by day-time without much danger of catching the infection, it seems scarcely possible to sleep there in summer and escape the malaria fever in one of its worst forms. Of four English artists who tried the experiment in 1822, not one escaped; and Mr. Harris, a young architect of great promise, died in Sicily from the consequences. These gentlemen made a discovery of some importance. They dug up near one of the temples some sculptured metopæ with figures in rilievo, of a singular primitive style, which seems to have more affinity with the Egyptian or the Etruscan, than with the Greek style of a later age. There are probably few Greek fragments of so ancient a date in so perfect a state of preservation.